AEM127 Whale Belly

Whale Belly approaches the chal­lenges of mod­ern urban life through a dis­tinctly folk lens.  I’m not sim­ply refer­ring to the genre of music that the band plays.  When most peo­ple hear the term folk, they think of folk music, which con­jures images of Bob Dylan, a bare­foot hill­billy play­ing banjo on a porch in Ken­tucky, a bare­foot Bob Dylan play­ing banjo on a porch in Ken­tucky, or other per­mu­ta­tions of the same com­po­nents.  Edu­cated lis­ten­ers may know bet­ter than to antic­i­pate bare­foot Bob Dylan, but they’ll still har­bor pre­con­cep­tions which, albeit con­sid­er­ably bet­ter informed, are nonethe­less the prod­uct of reflex.

Whale Belly’s music bor­rows styl­is­ti­cally from folk, but it also exhibits shades of rock, pop, blues, and west­ern clas­si­cal, and there are cer­tainly a num­ber of bands today play­ing in a more obvi­ously folksy vein.  Nev­er­the­less, the link becomes clearer when you strip away the con­no­ta­tions and focus on the ter­mi­nol­ogy itself.  Folk sig­ni­fies not just music but a way of life, the sim­ple life, and a rejec­tion of the ‘big­ger, faster, stronger’ ethos that fuels the so-called Amer­i­can dream.  In that regard, Whale Belly is a bona fide folk band.  The music doesn’t stem indi­rectly, via the genre “Folk Music”.  It stems directly from the source, evok­ing the phi­los­o­phy that sparked the genre in the first place.  It doesn’t mat­ter that the band mem­bers are chil­dren of the dig­i­tal age, resid­ing in the most urban of locales—Whale Belly projects a simul­ta­ne­ous love for human­ity and con­tempt for the soci­ety human­ity has sub­scribed to that would make Woody Guthrie proud.

At heart, Whale Belly is not just a band but a com­mu­nity of friends.  You’ll find any­where from 4 to 15 musi­cians onstage dur­ing the typ­i­cal Whale Belly set.  The focus of this musi­cal com­mu­nity is on cre­at­ing a dynamic show rather than a pol­ished CD or appear­ing hip.  Those involved put as lit­tle dis­tance between them­selves and the audi­ence as pos­si­ble.  Vocal­ist and multi-instrumentalist Todd Bogin explains, “we work really hard at involv­ing the crowd and mak­ing them feel a part of the whole thing.” The group fre­quently per­forms stunt like hav­ing the crowd jump up on stage to sing along.

It’s also clearly not about the money, as Whale Belly is offer­ing up its entire debut album, The Smile at the End of the Slope, for free down­load.  Inci­den­tally, this album makes a per­fect intro­duc­tion to the band.  It gath­ers up the chaotic reverie of the moment and mirac­u­lously packs it into a slen­der lit­tle disc that can be spun again and again.  Need­less to say, it doesn’t fit so cleanly, and casual lis­ten­ers may view the record­ings as clut­tered or even sloppy.  Some tracks have so much going on that it’s dif­fi­cult to pick indi­vid­ual parts out of the mix.  How­ever, so much seems unavoid­able when you have a ten-track album fea­tur­ing 23 dif­fer­ent musi­cians on instru­ments rang­ing from vio­lins to Wurl­itzers.  The record­ings are about as close to a live set in a packed and slightly ine­bri­ated club as you can get with­out step­ping out of your apart­ment.  The sin­cer­ity and inti­macy of the music are com­pletely unabridged.

In addi­tion to the live aes­thetic, the album is sup­ple­mented with orig­i­nal art­work by Bogin, which adds a per­sonal and decid­edly play­ful touch to every song.  I’ve included the images for both songs in this review and the rest can be down­loaded on the band’s web­site along with the album.  As you’ll notice, darker themes are dressed in the bright col­ors and car­toon abstrac­tion of youth­ful opti­mism.   Not a bad metaphor for the band.

Even the name is reveal­ing, fore­shad­ow­ing the lyri­cal con­tent of the album.  We could view the slope as sym­bolic of the strug­gles that we must endure to make ends meet and arrive at some­thing to smile about, but that’s not the whole story.  The name also pays homage to the band’s neigh­bor­hood, Brooklyn’s South Slope, while riff­ing off clichés like the pot of gold at the end of the rain­bow or the light at the end of the tun­nel.  This clever dou­ble enten­dre is only the tip of the ice­berg, for you’ll find that Whale Belly has a pen­chant for word­play that’s evi­dent through­out its catalogue.

In A-Side “Odds and Ends” Whale Belly takes a stock phrase, flips it on its end, and uses the result­ing devi­a­tion as a plat­form to explore a com­plex social phe­nom­e­non, unfounded biases and our reluc­tance to accept differences.

It’s odds and ends, ends and odds
We’re both the same per­son, just believe in dif­fer­ent gods
Mine is cruel and yours is sly…

The lis­tener finds an ironic twist at every turn, cul­mi­nat­ing in the par­al­lel struc­ture of the refrain:

I know what I hate but I just don’t know why.

The con­stant dou­ble enten­dre allows for an econ­omy of lan­guage, since each phrase is packed with so many lay­ers of mean­ing that Whale Belly man­ages to say a lot while say­ing very lit­tle.  As for deliv­ery, Bogin’s voice grabs lis­ten­ers’ atten­tion right away.  It’s not pretty and it’s not always in tune, yet that’s often an asset in both Folk Music and music of the com­mon folk alike.  Hon­esty is the goal and per­fec­tion is not hon­est.  Bogin deliv­ers like a true bal­ladeer and when I lis­ten to Whale Belly, I feel as if I’m being told a story rather than merely sung a song.  And if the vocals seem abra­sive, the music will tem­per that.  Tasty fid­dle licks smooth out the rough spots, nat­u­rally dri­ving the swells in vol­ume and tempo and help­ing the arrange­ment gel together.  Mean­while, snappy snare rolls, uptempo coun­try gui­tar strum­ming, and a steady rock­a­billy bassline pro­vide the ten­sion and momen­tum to keep the lis­tener engaged.

If you like what you hear, you’ll also want to check out the music video.  It fits broadly with the theme of soul search­ing expressed in the lyrics and high­lights the sense of move­ment con­veyed by the music… but above all, it’s fun!

B-Side “Poor Man’s Dance” is con­sid­er­ably more amped up than “Odds and Ends” and demon­strates the range of Whale Belly’s genre-hopping.  Bogin observes that when com­par­ing the two, “you can eas­ily see the diver­sity of the band and get an idea of how dif­fer­ent each song on the album sounds.” You’ll still find a bit of folk per­spec­tive but the Folk Music is buried under a healthy slab of dis­tor­tion.  The cho­rus even hints at a rock anthem, while the gui­tar gen­er­ally leans toward blues.  Aurally, it may still seem like an abrupt tran­si­tion but the lyrics and struc­ture help it adhere to the Whale Belly’s aes­thetic.  True to form, the band uses impec­ca­ble word­play in treat­ing some heavy issues.

The song hinges on the refrain—also the title lyric— “do the poor man’s dance…” To an extent, I feel like any song bold enough to ref­er­ence its own dance and to order the lis­tener to do it com­mands a cer­tain degree of respect.  Such songs make it crys­tal clear that you damn well bet­ter shut up and dig it, even if the “it” is some­thing as lewd as to “super­man that ho” or as inane as the hokey-pokey.  In this case, the com­mand is con­sid­er­ably more philo­soph­i­cal than either, but sim­i­larly self actu­al­iz­ing and, aston­ish­ingly, the first verse man­ages to ref­er­ence the hokey-pokey with­out sound­ing stupid.

Put your whole life in
Take your whole life out
Take all your clothes
and shake the money out

It’s the ironic recast­ing of a poor man rifling through his pock­ets for change as an action so delib­er­ate and art­ful as a dance.  Pow­er­ful juxtaposition.

In sum­mary, check out the album because it’s free and every song has some­thing unique to offer!  If you have the time and means, check out Whale Belly in con­cert too, because despite all I’ve said about the live aes­thetic of the album, noth­ing can com­pletely repli­cate the thrill of join­ing in on the moment and arriv­ing at that smile at the end of the slope.

Nate Green­berg

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